An Artist in her Own Right

by Ann Marti Friedman

  Our lunch was a delicious pot au feu of winter vegetables, chicken and potatoes. Gros and Navez, applying themselves to their food, were busily not noticing David apply himself to the wine. He drained his first glass with the grim eagerness of one who needed a drink. Despite the tense knot in my stomach, I ate two large mouthfuls and said encouragingly, “You really should eat more of this delicious food, Monsieur David. Your cook has made a true feast for us!”

  The two men grunted their assent with their mouths full. David gave me as much of a smile as his mouth could manage. “Alas, dear lady, I have not the appetite I once had, but it is a pleasure to see you enjoy yourself.” He refilled his glass almost to the brim and raised it as if in a toast – but his eyes were cold and hostile, and he defiantly drained it in one noisy gulp.

  Antoine caught my eye and shook his head slightly. Clearly the old man did not want us to notice how much he drank. David had noted our exchange and leaned forward to refill Gros’s glass with a small cold smile of triumph – Gros was on his side and had put me in my place.

  Navez, coming up for air after his first plateful, remembered his duties as co-host and turned the conversation to other topics. David helped himself to a third and fourth glass. When he had finished the bottle he selected another vintage and, bringing fresh glasses to the table, insisted we all try some. It was a light, delicate white wine and I could not hide my pleasure in it.

  “I’m happy Madame approves,” David said dryly.

  “You are a kind host,” I replied in the same tone of voice.

  The last course was a hazelnut torte. The housekeeper, who brought it, admonished David, “Be sure to save a slice for Madame – it is her favorite.” He made to cut a generous piece for her to take to his wife, but he could not manage it. The knife trembled in his grasp, spoiling the immaculate surface of the frosting, and he could not bring enough pressure upon it to slice even so yielding a substance.

  I realized then why the studio was so empty of his work and the dictatorial impulse to control the work of others was so strong, why a lifetime’s careful habit of sobriety was eroding. He could no longer lift and control his right arm and hand to wield a paintbrush. Painting and politics had been the twin passions of his life; now neither was left to him. No wonder he drank to dull the pain. I could have pitied him had I not remembered how he had treated Antoine the day before.

  I pulled the torte toward me and said, in my best hostess voice, “Let me serve.” David seemed a trifle apprehensive at handing over the large knife, but of course he could not say so. I felt a small spurt of triumph as I distributed the filled plates. He permitted me to pour the coffee when it arrived, and the meal ended peacefully.

  One cup of coffee would not go very far in countering all the wine, I thought, and remained on the alert. I brought out my knitting, prepared to fade into the background while the men resumed their conversation. Navez left soon after – his wife was expecting their first child, he said, and he would like to make sure she was all right. The room seemed colder and duller after he had left.

  My needles clicked on. When Gros got up to add another piece of wood to the stove, I remembered the afternoons at Marie Benoist’s studio, the colors and flowers and music and laughter. This bleak masculine space rejected all softening. Gros and Navez may have been at home in surroundings like these, but I missed the warmth and encouragement of my friends. My thoughts wandered from the men’s conversation when a change in David’s tone of voice made me look up sharply. It had neither warmth nor encouragement nor laughter in it; Gros was ashen as his teacher’s bile poured over him.

  “—licking the boots of the Bourbons to celebrate their so-called triumphs, as if running away from Napoleon were something to boast about. But you always were a political opportunist if you could get a commission out of it––”

  “That’s enough, Monsieur David.” I spoke quietly but firmly. He turned to me in surprise; he had forgotten I was there.

  “Eh? What was that?” He turned back to Antoine. “Are you hiding behind your wife’s skirts now as well as your mother’s?”

  “He is hiding nowhere. He has come here to offer his love and respect and admiration, and the results of his labors on your behalf with the French government, and he has sat quietly while you have only heaped abuse upon him. I find it ironic that you, who despite your Revolutionary principles embraced an Emperor and painted a tremendous canvas of his coronation, should level charges of opportunism against my husband. I have not heard you express regret for your actions, nor apologize for the exorbitant fees you charged.” He looked surprised. “Oh, yes, I heard all about them from Denon. He’s an old friend of my family, you know.”

  He glared at me. “That self-important paper-pusher! I would have been First Painter had he not interfered. What masterpieces has he painted for France, eh? I have been France’s greatest painter for the last forty years!”

  “You were a great painter, Monsieur David.” I nodded toward his recent pathetic effort. “But I would not harp upon Antoine’s faults unless I was sure I had none of my own.”

  “As a teacher, it is my duty to take a paternal interest in my students and guide them upon the right path.”

  “When they are in your studio. Antoine has been an adult these thirty years.”

  “Ah, but he always comes back asking for more. It’s one of the predictable pleasures of him. Like that statement of regret that he’s so eager for me to sign. I know it disappoints him when I refuse, but when larger issues are at stake, I can’t be worried about the petty disappointments of individuals.”

  “Is that really why you value my husband, Monsieur David? The depth of his personal disappointment is the measure of your success in sticking to your precious principles?”

  An instinctive denial rose to his mouth – one could see it on his tongue, ready to cross his teeth – it died there – honesty won out. He could not deny it. I felt like Charlotte Corday after she had just stabbed Marat, triumphant in the blazing light of truth. I glanced at the painting of Marat and back to David.

  “Antoine will hate you for pointing this out,” he said in a sly, confiding way. “He so desperately needs to believe in me, you know.” He grinned at his own maliciousness.

  Antoine had not uttered a sound. An indescribable mix of emotions crossed his face: he resented David for his insults, instinctively defended him against attack, and seemed unsure whether to praise or berate me.

  David gave him a look of disgust. “If you can’t speak up for me against this – this harridan – just go. Take her and get out of my sight, once and for all!” He sprang from his chair as fast as his advanced age would allow and threw open the door of the studio with a tremendous crash that brought the servants running to see what was the matter. “Monsieur and Madame Gros are just leaving,” he told them. “Please see them out.” He went back into the studio and shut the door with another loud bang.

  We walked down the stairs with the best aplomb we could muster. Gros thanked the housekeeper for our lunch and kissed her cheek. To her inquiring look he replied calmly, “I upset him, and my wife spoke up in my defense.” Knowing how David hated to be crossed, she nodded sympathetically. Antoine turned to me and said, “Come, my dear, let us go.”

  He was acting so mild that I had a twinge of worry that he might explode with anger when we were alone, but he did not, just squeezed my hand with a faint smile. At the hotel he handed me out of the fiacre and told me to go in: he wanted to do an errand and would be back in time for dinner. Worried, I asked, “You’re not going back there, are you?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “You’ll be all right?” I persisted. He nodded but didn’t offer an explanation.

  That evening he handed me a jeweler’s box at dinner. “To my knight in shining armor,” he said. Tears came to my eyes as I opened the box and put on the gold bracelet.

  Chapter 12

  Paris, 1827-1831

  As I have written of my life
, there is one topic that has been too painful to discuss fully until now – the lack of children in our marriage.

  As a girl, I dreamed of the children I would have – at the very least, a boy to carry on my husband’s name and be his mother’s pride and a girl to be my companion and her father’s delight, as I was to my father. Visiting my friends’ older sisters, I cooed over their babies, rejoicing in their happiness, knowing it would one day be mine as well. While I waited for Charles to return from Spain, I would wonder sometimes, as I studied the youthful face in the miniature, whether our son would look like his father at that age. The child was so real to me that when Charles was killed, the loss of the son I had imagined was part of my grief.

  When I did marry, children were no longer hypothetical but sure to come. Antoine and his mother, discussing the matter at length, let me know they wanted a boy who would be the third-generation artist in the family. They would name him Jean-Antoine after his grandfather; he in turn would have a son he would name Antoine-Jean, and so it would go on for generations. Maman Madeleine, coming from a family of goldsmiths, had the strong pride of the skilled artisan; if the boy were to show more of an inclination toward her father’s profession, so much the better! Their discussions left me with mixed feelings. While I would be happy to give my husband a son, it was clear that the boy would be taken over by his father and grandmother to be molded into their family traditions. What I longed for most was a daughter for myself to love, a little girl who would belong to me and love me.

  I began to prepare a layette during our honeymoon. Stitching and embroidering the tiny garments, I fell into a dreamy reverie that even Antoine’s mother’s comments about my slipshod supervision of the housekeeping could not penetrate. I imagined purchasing an elegant mahogany cradle to show off our baby to all who would come to congratulate us. I gave much thought to what to name a girl. Her two grandmothers were both Madeleine, so that was a given for one of her names. For the other I preferred Giselle. I spent hours at the window stitching into the garments of the layette my dreams of the things Giselle and I would do together. My layette was complete before our first anniversary, but the child had not yet come. I continued to hold out hope, only to be disappointed, month after month, year after year. Even the passionate afternoon that followed the argument over Charles’s portrait in 1813 did not have the outcome I desired so much.

  “Don’t worry,” everyone told me. “You’re still young. There’s plenty of time. Just relax, and enjoy trying!” They always winked as they said this, and it never failed to make me wince. They meant to be encouraging, I know, but came across as heartless.

  Even when I met Charlotte and Marie and became part of their circle, throwing myself into my painting, I never stopped hoping for a child. It was one of those superstitious bargains one makes. Perhaps, if I looked as though I was happy doing something else, a baby would come. It continued to be the first and chief desire expressed in my prayers. I could rely on my talent and efforts to help me succeed at my art, but conceiving a child clearly required divine help. I sound flippant, even sacrilegious, I know, but the issue was painfully serious to me.

  I was desperate enough to try advice that I now recognize as old wives’ tales: food and drink to feed to Antoine or have him abstain from, a small vial of blessed water to sprinkle on myself before intercourse, a piece of ribbon specially blessed on Annunciation Day to wear around my neck. In my desperation I even consulted a midwife who supposedly could help me, a woman rumored to be nearly a witch; but I couldn’t bring myself to use the strange powders she offered. How ironic that a daughter of the Enlightenment should turn to such resources! Our superior learning becomes a thin veneer in times of distress, when superstition comes flooding back.

  As all my efforts met with failure, I began to wonder – was it bad luck, or was one of us unable to conceive a child? Was I barren? I shuddered – what an awful word! – not a mere adjective but a harsh judgment on one’s most basic capacity as a woman. Antoine’s mother hurled it at me more than once. Pushed beyond forbearance, I made a tart reply that it could just as easily have been Antoine’s fault. It was not something I would ever have said to my husband, but she made sure he knew I had said it. Recriminations and counter-charges flew through the household, wreaking further havoc upon our marriage.

  Josée was still traveling in Italy, so that I did not have the haven of her studio to retreat to. Attempting to find consolation in prayer, I spent many hours in church. I was only in my thirties, but I began to feel as old and forlorn as the black-clad widows around me.

  Then came the worst blow of all – Antoine fathered a child. The question of who had been at fault for our childless state was settled. Maman Madeleine was triumphant in the vindication of her son.

  The discovery of his lovechild came at a particularly vulnerable time for me. Josée had come back to Paris only briefly and was now traveling throughout France. Antoine had suffered a nervous collapse following the deaths of Géricault and Girodet in 1824 and David and Denon in 1825. I, too, was hard-hit by the death of Denon, our lifelong family friend; it was like losing my father all over again. After I had nursed Antoine through his crisis and seen him restored to health, Maman fell ill. Coping with all this illness enforced my neglect of my painting and added up to an unrelieved round of drudgery. Then Maman died. No matter how much a death comes as a blessed relief for both afflicted and caretaker, it still calls forth grief and mourning.

  Without the presence of Maman, our most consistent unifying force, my relationship with my brother and sister changed. Henri, who had done the least to help us with her care, now expected his sisters to take over her role in caring for him. When we declined, thinking it high time he grew up, he reproached us with indignant self-pity. Pauline and Henri then found a unifying cause in their lingering resentment that I had been given Maman’s share of Papa’s estate when I married. That I had always turned the income over to Pauline for Maman’s care made no difference. Pauline grumbled that it shouldn’t have been mine in the first place, and Henri, I knew, brooded that it would have been easier to get his hands on more of it had it been Maman’s to dispose of instead of mine. Eager to wash my hands of this long-running dispute, I arranged for my brother and sister each to receive one-third of the income. By tacit agreement we all needed a vacation from each other.

  Lifting myself out of my family preoccupations, I began to notice that Antoine was happier than I had seen him in a long time. He added touches of color to his habitual black and white – a bright red cravat, a blue scarf. Two new shirts appeared in his armoire, the flowing kind affected by poets, a style he had always disliked, yet now he wore these gladly. He stood up straight and walked with a spring in his step, even running upstairs at times. And there was a change in his behavior to me that I could not understand – kindness with an undertone of pity, as though I were a newly widowed client seeking a memorial portrait. I puzzled over these things but could not make out their source.

  Then, one day in June 1827 I went to his studio to surprise him with lunch at a restaurant. While I was still a little distance away, I saw him coming out of the building. The greeting I was about to call out died on my lips when I saw that he had his arm about the waist of a woman who carried an infant in her arms. Before they had gone many steps, he took the baby from her while she bent down to remove a pebble from her shoe. “Who’s Daddy’s little girl?” he said, smiling fondly at the infant and kissing her forehead. His face alight with animation and pleasure, he looked years younger. They were so obviously a family group that I, his wife, was left standing on the outside. I was too shocked to cry out. They did not see me but turned up the street away from me. Once they were out of sight, I came back to life, stumbling a few steps. My stomach heaved and I retched into the gutter. Passers-by gave me a wide berth, assuming I was drunk. Their suspicious faces were the last straw to complete my humiliation.

  Somehow I made my way home again and lay wretched and shivering for the rest of
the afternoon. I had the maid make up the bed in my studio – the room that had been, ironically, intended as the nursery. I could not bear the thought of lying in our marriage bed, with its familiar smell of Antoine. I could not help wondering if her bed now smelled like him. I lay with my eyes open, staring at the ceiling – whenever I closed them, the scene on the rue des Fossés Saint-Germain came sickeningly to mind. Oddly, I couldn’t remember the woman’s features, and I hadn’t seen the child at all, only Antoine’s face as he spoke to her. I had no sense of time passing until the maid tapped on the door to inquire if I was well enough to come down for dinner, or if she should bring me something on a tray. I sent her away – I had not eaten since breakfast, but I was not hungry. I continued to stare at the ceiling until weariness overcame me and I slept.

  When I made my way downstairs the next morning in my dressing gown, pale and lightheaded from lack of food, Antoine and his mother were at their places at the table as usual. Antoine stood and pulled out my chair for me as was his courteous custom, then went on dipping his brioche into his café au lait, eating with good appetite and a self-satisfied air. I longed to punctuate it, to give him something to worry about. My resentful air grew as I ate and drank, with what I thought were covert glances in his direction.

  Suddenly his mother’s voice cut across the breakfast table: “Stop sulking, girl! You’ve got something to say – say it.” It was the voice she used to flay a servant who did not quite measure up to standard, and it implied that my illness was certain to have been merely a fit of pique.

  “Maman,” my husband said in mild protest.

  “Well, she is sulking – there’s no reason––” she started.

  That did it. “I went to your studio yesterday to take you to lunch,” I began.